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March 31st, Wednesday.—Mr. and Mrs M—— were put into No. 1. Both complain of a very sleepless night.
Miss Langton in No. 8 heard sounds after daylight—footsteps shuffling round the bed, and a knock near the wardrobe. No one is overhead nor in No. 7, the next room.
Mrs. M—— spent two hours alone in the drawing-room. She asked me just before lunch what guns those were she had heard. I suggested "The keeper?" and she said, "No, it is like the gun you hear at Edinburgh at one o'clock a long way off," which is a good description of the familiar detonating sound (cf. under date, February 8).
Her own account of the day is as follows:—
"B—— House.
"I arrived here last evening, Tuesday, 30th of March, about six o'clock. It was a nice bright evening, but cold. I was received by Miss Freer, who gave me some tea, and then I was taken to my bedroom by Miss Langton, of whom I asked if my room was haunted. She said it had 'a reputation', but somehow or another it did not seem to impress me much. That night Miss S—— and her brother dined here; they were very pleasant, and talked away hard, and we played card games, such as 'Old Maid' and 'Muggins.' We went to bed feeling quite happy, saying we had never been in such an unghostly house before. The bed was quite comfortable, and we lay talking quite happily, but could not sleep, and were not in the least bit restless. About two o'clock we dozed off, and a few minutes to four a.m. we were both suddenly awoke by a terrific noise, which sounded to me like the lid of the coal-scuttle having caught in a woman's gown. We then lay awake until about 6.30, and in that interval we heard a few noises, what I cannot exactly describe, as they were very ordinary sounds one might hear in any not very solidly built house. We came down to breakfast feeling we had passed a sleepless night, but otherwise quite happy. After breakfast I went into the smoking-room in the new wing, where my husband was writing letters. I sat there a good time, and he was in and out of the room. All the time I heard tramping up above as if the housemaid was doing the room. Not knowing the geography of the house I took it for No. 8. and thought what very noisy servants these were. I then went into the drawing-room to write my own letters, and Miss Freer came and spoke to me there. While she was with me there, I heard a distant cannon, exactly like the one o'clock gun in Edinburgh, and the whole morning a ceaseless chatter, which I put down to Miss Freer and Miss Langton in the room next door (cf. under date, March 23rd).
April 1st, Thursday.—This is Mrs. M——'s account of last night. "Last evening we were late for dinner, as Mr. M—— and I had been out to see the nun by the burn, but had seen nothing. The whole evening I had a sort of half consciously disagreeable feeling, and when I went to my room it was some time before I could make up my mind to get into bed. The servants very much annoyed me; they were making such a needless amount of noise in running about the room overhead. [The room overhead was empty. Since their adventure of March 23rd, the servants had slept on the other side of the house.] At last I got into bed, and I may say I hardly slept a wink the whole night. I simply lay in terror, of what I cannot say, but I had the feeling of some very disagreeable sensation in the air, but we did not hear a sound all night from the time we got into bed until we got up next morning at 8.30.
"I spent the whole of the morning in the drawing-room writing letters and reading, and from time to time I went up to No. 1 to get books and different things, and each time was a little surprised to find the room empty, as there had been a ceaseless noise of housemaids, and very noisy ones too. I also heard what I had described before as the cannon. After luncheon Miss Freer and Miss Langton and I went out walking, and just as we were coming in to tea we all three heard the cannon, and then I said that is the noise I heard every morning, and sometimes in the evening, in the drawing-room."
This afternoon we were having tea in the drawing-room at 4.30, Mrs. M——, Miss Langton, and myself. We heard some one walking overhead in No. 1, a sound we have heard often before, when we knew the room to be empty above. Mrs. M—— remarked that it was just the sound she had heard, again and again, when sitting alone in the drawing-room.